Love's Growth I scarce believe my love to be so pure As I had thought it was, Because it doth endure Vicissitude, and season, as the grass; Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore My love was infinite, if spring make’ it more. But if medicine, love, which cures all sorrow With more, not only be no quintessence, But mixed of all stuffs paining soul or sense, And of the …
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Practice Notes: Directed Thought & Evaluation
Weather Report This phrase—directed thought and evaluation—has been popping into my mind, as of late, largely in relation to renewed interest in questions of agency, choice, volition, intention, and so-called free will. I’ve contemplated these issues previously, and recorded my provisional conclusions in Do I Choose My Thoughts?—which I invite you to check out, if you haven’t already. It’s an …
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Only Your Name
In this excerpt from Rabindranath Tagore's The Lover of God, Radha speaks to her friend and confidant about her longing for Krishna: her "Dark Lord Syama." The Yamuna is a tributary of India's Ganges river. It's in the forest along the banks of the Yamuna that Krishna dances and plays with the gopis: the cowherds enchanted by his divine music. In this poem, the "luminous Yamuna" can be …
The Heavens Unfastened
Poetry And it was at that age ... poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, not silence, but from a street it called me, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among raging fires or returning alone, there it was, without a face, and it …
Unbroken
Like The Prow Of A Boat "Be, therefore, like the prow of a boat: It cleaves the water, yet it leaves in its wake water unbroken." Is this not one of the best-ever grasshopper teaching moments!? Let's explore this image in a bit more depth--but first, here it is in all its glorious original context ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXDZOa1rEp0 Leaving No Trace This image--of the …
Q & A
Lal Dĕd Goes Riding The following two verses--a question and its answer--are excerpted from I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd. This collection of Lalla's poems--translated beautifully by Ranjit Hoskote--is one of my favorites: for its informative and insight notes, as much as for the poems themselves. 78 Shiva's the horse and Vishnu's the saddle, Brahma's cheering at the stirrup. Only the …